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Showing results for tags 'retiree health care'.
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Please be advised. There was a MAJOR change to the retiree healthcare plan for the Big 3 two years ago. This change was never spelled out in the nice brochure that we get every year that gives us our"Highlights of Benefits" that we receive every year, which looks similar to what you get before voting on your contract. It is buried on another website that they refer to on page 33 of "Medical Coverage Exclusions". They do not cover hospital "admissions principally for observation". (If you google this, observation, the main topics you'll find is for Medicare patients who were in the hospital for observation and discharged to a nursing home. Medicare will not pay for the nursing home if they were discharged with this observation status). I found this out the hard way. Hospitals started this classification over 10 years ago and it was rarely utilized at that time. Now it covers over 25% of overnight stays in the hospital. You are either admitted as an "inpatient" or "observation". The cost for this stay at a Promedica hospital is over $8000.00/ day and they can have you classified as observation for 6 days or more before admitting or discharging you. (Thats right, $48,000). Luckily I only spent one night. You are actually in a REAL hospital room with nurses and other employees and other "inpatients" and unless you have knowledge of this you have no idea of your status. Our retiree insurance pays ZERO for this, no deductible or co-insurance allowance. WHY DO WE HAVE INSURANCE???? We already pay 100% for all office visits to see a specialist. I am not complaining about that. I have no problem helping to share in the cost of my healthcare. I had an open abdominal surgery and they said that I was not an inpatient!!! You would not believe what is not covered. Unless you have Medicare which MIGHT pay for this and you are retired under age 65, YOU HAVE NO INSURANCE THROUGH THE BIG 3 RETIREE PLAN TO PAY FOR THIS. I am meeting this week with my regions international rep. for retiree healthcare. We had a meeting at our regions headquarters that was standing room only about 7 years ago about this VEBA plan. The international rep. from Detroit assured us that they hired experts to scrutinize this plan and we were assured that there was enough money set aside to fund the VEBA for 80 YEARS! The latest plan year status report that we received states that there was 17.1 Billion dollars in the Ford plan as of Dec.31, 2013 and 1 year earlier there was 15.8 Billion dollars. (A good year for investments and after paying out benefits the plan did rather well). I am writing this FYI to be aware of this, (and all of the other exclusions on page 33). Most of these exclusions are understandable as they are for elective procedures. The representatives at Blue Cross told me that active employees are not subject to this and that those plans have superior coverage. Please inquire at your local and regional levels. You should be concerned if you plan on retiring before age 65.
